Behind the Walls of Azkaban
by Effusion
Summary: You are no innocent, Mr. Black. But you are innocent of what you are in here, in this hell for. I'm not so innocent. But I know how to beat them. Would you like to escape, Mr. Black? I know the way out.


**Prologue**

_Your birth is a mistake you'll spend your whole life trying to correct it  
- Chuck Palahniuk (1961)_

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My name is Jane. No. Nothing spectacular.

Not Jane, short for something magnificent.

Not Jane, with a really quirky last name.

Just Jane.

My mother wasn't particularly imaginative when she named me. But then again, my mother wasn't particularly imaginative about anything. My grandmother, when she speaks to me, that is, tells me how on the day of my birth, my mother took one look at me and wrinkled her pretty little nose...then waved me away. You see, she, unlike me, had been an absolutely beautiful baby. Grandmother never fails to tell me how even the nurses in the hospital had called her a little angel.

And how when my mother and grandmother had seen me, all they had seen was this rather, and I quote, wrinkled little old man.

Funny thing about that. I thought all babies looked like wrinkled little one men.

So, unremarkable as I was, my mother and grandmother brought me home to...well, how should I say, save face. After all, they couldn't just dispose of all the baby shower gifts, now, could they? No, no, what would the neighbors say if they appeared without a baby?

So, the dazzling teddy bears and the dolls from kind strangers, kept me safe from both, being shuttled between foster homes as well as an orphanage.

But look, I sound like I'm complaining. Indeed, I am not. For you see, my mother and grandmother were always cordial to me, indeed, more so than needed, given their disgust for having had a dark eyed, dark skinned, dark haired baby...in comparison to their angelic long blonde hair and lovely blue eyes.

No. I, with me hair as black as the raven's wing, and eyes as fathomless as the color itself, was a disappointment to the Smith family looks. It didn't help that my features were sharp where theirs were soft...and my body long and thin, whilst theirs were soft and curved.

I suppose I had a father...once upon a time when my mother was young, she must have loved a man as dark as me, but he must have been handsome...I don't doubt that my father was handsome you know...My mother would have never loved him had he not been handsome, you know...and she was married to him a while.

Grandmother says, he walked out when he found out she was pregnant. And she had had to bring her home, and take care of her.

Mother says, some men are just not ready for a child, even after marriage.

It doesn't matter. I don't really care who he was. I lost faith he was coming for me, a very long time ago. But anyway...this story is not about me. It's about those odd people who lived across the street from us. When I say odd, I don't mean in any other way...I mean, people would consider my family odd. We're witches, you know.

But not, well...I'm a half blood. My mother and grandmother are pure. Maybe that was what made them...feel so awkward about me as well.

Again, I disgress.

This story...is about the people who lived across the street from us. When I was only two years old and I had just learnt how to walk, I used to spend my time in the garden and I could see the front of their house completely clearly. It was rather big and gothic and...well, bleak...whenever we did get to see it. It was a magical house, you know. Not everyone could see it. The house was rather dusty and smelled funny...maybe because most of the rooms were not allowed to be touched by the house elves...but the garden was lovely. In fact, the garden was wonderful. Sometimes my mother and I used to sit together there and she was, rather kindly, read me a story.

Maybe I have given you the wrong impression, but my mother was not a bad mother. She protected me when-

Oh, but that is a story for another day.

I was going to turn six when this happened...and I remember the sun was just beginning to set. And my grandmother and mother were infuriated with me because I hadn't started speaking yet...they forgot that whilst I couldn't speak, I could very well understand. So, I had taken to the garden and was sitting between the bars of the fence swinging my legs when I heard the door of the house in front of us slam open.

A boy was standing there, much older than me I remember, but he had to be just a boy because he didn't really had a mustache...Mother said that all men had mustaches and hair all over their faces. And he was carrying a bag over stuffed with things...as if he had been packing in a hurry. He was screaming at this woman, who was standing at the door, her hair wild and her wand drawn on the boy.

"I don't CARE what you think, Wallaburga-"

"Don't you dare call me by my first name, you impertinent boy! I am STILL your moth-"

"Mother?" the boy spat at her angrily, "Don't even use that word! You're not even worthy of being an aunt, FUCK being a mother-"

The woman's eyes widened and she screamed some sort of spell which the boy easily ducked, laughing as he did.

"Get OUT! Get OUT of my sights, Sirius! I don't want to see your face again! Those blood traitors and mudbloods have-"

The boy's laughter stopped, "Don't you dare call them that!" he growled as his hand went to grip his own wand. Then he loosened his grip. "You're not worth it."

"And YOU'RE no son of mine! Don't you come begging back here for even a penny, boy! We won't give you a damned sickle!" her eyes regarded the boy with so much fury that I shivered.

"Don't fucking worry. You won't be seeing my face EVER again!"

With that, he turned on his heel and walked away. I flinched when the door slammed shut behind him.

It wasn't until he had reached the garden where I was sitting that I saw a tear trickle down his cheek...which he roughly brushed away.

And when he had left, I walked back into the house and I said my first word.

"Fuck."

But all that was a very, very long time ago.

It has been fourteen years since then. Fourteen years where a lot has changed.

I'm still the shame of my family, I was until their deaths.

I'm still a half blood.

I'm still nothing like my mother or my grandmother.

And fourteen years later, I'm still living across the same boy who had stormed out of his mother's home all those years ago.

In Azkaban.

Let me reintroduce myself.

My name is Jane Smith. And I have a fetish for murder.


End file.
